Birthday stars

albertw

If you doubt the immensity of space, then look for your birthday star at:
http://outreach.jach.hawaii.edu/birthstars/

Thanks to Dr. Ian Elliott in Dunsink for this.

Cheers,
~Al

BEAT

This is amazing, is it true? I mean, in a matter of a second it finds "my" birthday star out of billions of stars, if this is infact accurate I think it is the best thread in this forum. Couldnt there be more than just one star though? how does it find that one star in particular?
Well done :-)

ahhh, I clicked on the corresponding links and found some wonderful information...thatnks for posting this!

albertw

Originally posted by BEAT
This is amazing, is it true? I mean, in a matter of a second it finds "my" birthday star out of billions of stars, if this is infact accurate I think it is the best thread in this forum. Couldnt there be more than just one star though? how does it find that one star in particular?
Well done :-)

Thanks to the HIPPARCOS satellite that was launched a few years ago we now have (reasonably) accurate distances to many thousands of stars.

All this program does is works out your age, say 27, and then find a star that is 27 light years away and plots it on the screen. The idea being that the light now reaching us from the star actually left the star when you were born. There could indeed be several stars the same distance from earth, but the program just picks one, any more would just be greedy

Cheers,
~Al

ambasite

pretty mind blowing alright, was set for another uneventful afternoon in the office, now my head is melted. such distances - mind blowing. :cool:

Seanie M

mine is Vega...

...always knew I'd grow up to be a big bright shining star... or so my mom kept saying...

BEAT

¥î (Xi) Ursae Majoris in Johann Bayer's Uranometria star catalog. It is also called 53 Ursae Majoris in the Historia C©«lestis Britannica of John Flamsteed and Edmund Halley. It is called NS 1118+3133 A in the NStars database.

It has visual magnitude 4.32 meaning that you could see this star with the naked eye in good viewing conditions. It is marked in the center of this star chart, at celestial coordinates (J2000 equinox):

BEAT

Hey arthur, do you have any other links along the lines of this one?